


Only Then I Am Human, Only Then I Am Clean

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Past Child Abuse, Scars, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 07:28:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3641784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl loves to touch Beth. Needs to touch her. Being touched... That's a little more complicated. As far as Beth is concerned, it's time to try to make it a little more simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Then I Am Human, Only Then I Am Clean

**Author's Note:**

> This is maybe post-Coda Beth-assumed-survival and could also be assumed to be taking place in the ASZ, but I've purposefully left things vague. Written for Bethyl Smut Weekend and inspired in part by [this.](http://thevampirecat.tumblr.com/post/114858224862/reflections)

She doesn’t think he means to set rules. That’s just kind of what happens.

He’s difficult. She knows this. Knew it a long time ago. It was actually one of the first things she knew about him, this half crazy man who she only really _noticed_ when he got dragged up to the house shot in the head, impaled through the side, covered in blood, and even now - though she hasn’t worked up the courage to ask him about it and it’s possible she never will - she could have sworn she heard something about a necklace of walker ears.

Honestly, knowing him, it wouldn’t surprise her all that much. He’s sweet. He’s kind. Extraordinarily. These aren’t words she would have attached to him back then, and even for a while after, but he is. Took a while to say _I love you,_ has a hard time expressing himself when he really feels something, but he can show her. Loves showing her. Loves being good to her in every way he can think of. So yes, he’s sweet and kind and he’s a good man, maybe one of the best men she’s ever known, but she’s not sure she would exactly call him _stable._

He’s better than he was. 

But now that they’ve taken those last few steps - not really _last_ steps at all, there are a lot of steps still to take, but it was definitely the end of a stage - she’s seeing all the ways in which this is still hard for him. How he’s still afraid of things. A lot of things. First time they were together and she stripped in front of him, pulling off her clothes in low candlelight and letting it play over her skin, he watched and she saw him trembling, just a little, and she knew he was afraid. He touched her - hesitant at first, coming to her, putting his hands on her, and she pressed herself into him and tried her best to make it clear to him that she wanted to be touched. His hands are big and rough with callouses, strong - strong enough to hurt her, and how he ran his palms and fingers over her shoulders, her breasts, cupped them, stroked his thumbs curiously over her nipples until they hardened, how he laid them over her hips, how he spread her thighs when he pushed her down and laid himself between them, her knees up and back. She gripped his shoulders, felt the muscles move as he braced himself over her and thrust into her, and he looked like he was in pain.

He was so careful. He was still shaking. He wanted to fall into her. She felt the desperation there, how he was trying to hold himself back because he could devour her. He was so big over her, pressing her down, and she felt how he was containing himself. She was so wet then, with her fingers and then his - she took his hand and showed him what she wanted him to do, and he threw himself into it with an almost childlike eagerness that didn’t surprise her at all.

In the end all he wanted to do was touch her. Touch her everywhere. His mouth on her neck, just the softest scrape of his teeth when he found the courage. Hands on her breasts again, on her waist and hips. Moving her where he wanted her - or maybe where he tried to guess she wanted to be. He wants to touch her so bad it hurts him.

She figured out very early on that it wasn’t lust. He actually doesn’t feel all that much lust for her, not in the way she understands the word.

But he feels need like she’s never experienced. May never know herself. He missed her before he even know she existed. He missed her so hard.

She spread her legs, hooked them over the back of his thighs. Rolled herself up against him. Thought _Fuck me, fuck me_ and didn’t know how to say it.

They’re both very new at this.

But after the first few times she started to notice there were rules. Unspoken ones. And when she went back and thought about it, trying to figure it out - lying in his arms after and feeling so strangely unsatisfied even though he did everything he could to please her - she thought of when he was first touching her in any way. Before any of this happened. When he was clearly still figuring it out. He couldn’t keep his hands off her, even though it was entirely innocent. He touched her like he had only just figured out he could - and in fact maybe that was the case. He touched her like he was practicing. Finding out what he could and couldn’t do. What felt good to him. What she seemed to like. Like sex, except it wasn’t. It was just about being with someone in any sense, and it was messing with him. Through it, he was learning to relax. Learning to not really be afraid when he touched her. Getting braver. Letting himself like it.

But when she touched him he stiffened, seemed uncomfortable. Seemed to want to pull away. And then, when this hits her, she understands: he needs to be in control. And it’s not a stupid male dominance thing. It’s not about owning her or putting her in her place. He would never feel like that about her. He might be horrified by the thought of that.

He needs to be in control because he’s so scared. Even now. Not just of hurting her.

On some level, still, he’s afraid of being hurt.

She saw his back. His scars. After a while, he worked up the courage to let her see them. She knows what’s going on.

She’s patient. She knows she has to be, because Daryl Dixon is difficult. It’s a defining feature. She’s probably never going to change that about him, no matter how hard she tries.

But she doesn’t feel like she can allow this to go on. It’s not fair, and it’s not helping him.

So.

Late. He’s with her and they’re together for this singular purpose. Candles again - not because it’s romantic, because somehow _romance_ in the cliched sense doesn’t belong here, and while she does love how it makes him look, the shape of him and the outlines of his muscles and his jaw and cheekbones thrown into sharper relief, it’s also because it’s more practical in a number of ways. Everything here is very limited. Always will be. Time. Space. Everything.

That’s one thing they know so well. There’s never enough.

He undresses her. She lets him. Not _lets;_ she arches under it, moving to help him, canting her hips forward when he pulls down her jeans and slides a hand between her legs, fingers grazing her clit and pulling a sigh out of her. _Daryl._ Hands against his biceps and as usual he stiffens, though he doesn’t pull away and she feels a twinge of frustration. She wants him so bad, and he must be able to _feel_ that, and all she wants now is for him to trust her.

All she wants is for him to feel safe.

When she’s naked she lies back, thighs spread and her own hand between them, stroking herself just a little and falling into a low simmer as she watches his own clothes come off and watches him crawl toward her, cock hard and heavy between his legs and the head already glistening with precome.

She wants to taste it. He’s only let her do that once. Like he’s afraid of that too.

 _Come on,_ she whispers - not even really meaning to. Finger inside her cunt, and she sees him draw in a hitching breath. He loves touching her; he loves watching her touch herself. It’s educational, or it started that way, but now he just loves it. _God, Daryl, come on._

Reaches for him with her free hand and sees him freeze up for just a second, and thinks _This can’t go on anymore._

He’s close to her, almost on top of her, and that’s when she sits up and frames his face with her hands.

Sudden panic. Or close to it. For a moment she’s sure he’ll pull away and this will all be ruined. But instead he lets her hold him there, and he licks his lips, his eyes wide.

"Turn around."

Now he looks baffled. Like he literally doesn’t know what she means. Probably he doesn’t. She sits up a little further, one hand on his shoulder - ruthless. She’s very patient with him, knows how much he tries, but she’s not backing down anymore. Not about this.

"Turn around." She takes a breath. "Let me see your back."

He gets it. She sees the light go on.

Now it’s not just instinctive panic. Now it’s conscious terror. She’s seen it, he showed her, but he was shaking then too, and she could tell it was almost too much for him. Since then he hasn’t tried to hide it, but he also hasn’t given her a close look. And she hasn’t pressed him on it.

That ends here.

"Daryl." Maybe she’s ruthless, but she’s also gentle. She leans in and nods their mouths together, barely a kiss, and murmurs his name again. She feels part of him easing into it, loosening, even if he’s still so tense. Every muscle coiled. "It’s alright."

He wants to make her happy. It’s all he wants. Ultimately he wants it more than he wants to protect himself. She already knew that too.

He pushes himself up and turns, baring his back, and the scars are dark, cruel slashes in the light.

What was done to him to put them there.

She knows. She’s not a doctor, never had much of the training of her father, but she knows what it takes to make scars like these. You hit someone so hard you raise welts, and then you keep hitting them so hard the welts break open and bleed. He bled a lot. She’s been through hell, but she looks at the evidence of how bad he was hurt and she can’t even imagine that kind of pain.

It hits her. Angry red stripes across her heart.

And this is going to hurt him too. But she has to do it.

She reaches out. He must feel the movement of the air so close to his skin, because he stiffens and gasps even before she touches him, but he doesn’t pull away, and when she runs a fingertip down one of the hard, raised lines he lets out a low sob that pierces her.

Up the line to his shoulder. Slow, soft. He’s shaking now like he’s being hit all over again. She wonders if maybe this really is too much. If it was a bad idea. She can see his hands clenched in his lap, his erection gone, and he whispers _Stop._

She pulls her hand back, but she doesn’t move away. “Daryl… Please don’t make me.”

He shakes his head. For a moment he doesn’t budge and she’s sure he really does mean it and this will have to be enough until he’s ready to take more. And that’s okay. Could be she pushed him further and faster than she should have.

But then he shifts. Presses back toward her. Like he’s seeking her hand. And everything in her knots up, because she’s been frustrated with him, impatient in spite of her essential patience, but Jesus _God,_ he is so brave.

So she touches him again.

She keeps it slow and soft, sometimes barely there at all. She traces each one with her fingertips and he shudders and whimpers, twists under her hands. But he keeps himself there. She’s mapping him, learning him, familiarizing herself with new territory. He’s letting her move in, cross borders, conquer. And at some point her fingers give way to her mouth and she’s moving along those lines with her lips, scattering kisses across them with her hands on his sides, his shoulders, and when he feels her tongue the whole tenor of it changes.

He presses back harder. Moans. And that’s when she knows she’s finally broken him, and she smiles against the warring ink demons needled into the skin of his shoulderblade.

"I love you," she whispers. Then - and it feels just the right side of twisted, enough on the right side of it that it arcs back around to the most _right_ thing she can say right now - “I love them.”

He moans again, something that could be her name, and she’s almost scrambling on her hands and knees, moving around to face him.

He stares at her from beneath the fall of his hair, eyes dark and still wide. He’s breathing so hard, like he’s been running, like he’s already been fucking her. She drops her gaze between his legs and it’s perfect beyond anything she was hoping for: his hand is there and he’s hard again, stroking himself, and the look he gives her is all pain and hunger and that need that underpins everything. Need for her like air.

She surges herself forward and pushes his hand away, replaces it with her own, and as she settles into his lap and straddles him she guides him into her.

They gasp at the same time and he curls his arms around her just as she hooks her legs over his hips, flush with his stomach and chest. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and shivers, moving herself just a little; he’s so deep in her like this and somehow he feels harder, bigger, filling her up almost to the point of pain. His head falls back and he moves with her, rolling even deeper into her, the sound dragged out of him choked and thick.

_Beth._

Hands on his back again, fingers spread as she holds on and starts to move, rocking in his lap. She feels the raised lines of the scars again and it sends a jolt of heat straight to her cunt. Not the agony that made them but that he gave that much of himself to her. Finally. And she’s touching him, and it’s like it’s finally all he wants. What he can _let_ himself want.

 _Daryl. Oh God, Daryl._ His name like it has all the weight of a curse behind it. Of one of those things people say when they fuck. Everything sweet and hard and hot in it. Just his name. _Daryl._ And as he holds her tighter, moves even faster, what forces its way out of his throat is closer to a growl.

She’s strong and so is he. He just needs to understand that.

It’s awkward, the balance is a little off with how she’s moving, and she has to grip his shoulders to stay upright, but it’s perfect, absolutely _perfect,_ her nails digging into his back as she grinds herself against him. She’s already close, feels like he is too - like he needs this just like he needs everything about her, like this isn’t just coming. This isn’t just sending her over and following. This is giving someone the finger with their entire bodies and how they’re joined and what they’re doing to each other.

This is fucking like defiance of the past.

 _Beth, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck-_ Building in him sharp and sudden and cracking open, flooding him as he floods into her. She can feel it all around her, inside her, the way he trembles, releases everything. He’s still moving, whining between his teeth, and she lets go with one hand and shoves it between them, rough and insistent on her clit, and that’s all she needs, arching back and crying out and almost falling.

He holds her up, buries his face in the hollow of her throat. Through the hot pulse of pleasure in her head she feels wet on his face. Sweat.

Tears, maybe.

She’s not afraid of that. It might be okay. It might be very good.

Everything uncoils. They drift back down, breathing hard. Leaning on each other, tangled. She slides her hands into his damp hair, not caring that the fingers of one are sticky with his come and her own rush of wet.

She’s not sure she’s ever felt him this loose.

"Oh my God, Beth," he breathes, and the shudder that runs through her is a little bit like laughter.

_I know. I know._

At some point they sink down, still wrapped up in each other, but he slips out of her and immediately she misses him. She rocks herself a little, like she’s trying to get him back. He tucks his face into the curve of her throat again and the sigh he lets out is shaky and deep.

 _I love them,_ she whispers again, stroking his hair. His shoulders. Whatever parts of his back she can reach. _I love them. I do._

Then for a while there’s nothing much.

Before he sleeps he turns over onto his stomach. She doesn’t have to ask him. And he turns his face toward her and closes his eyes, and she runs her fingers over him again. Again and again and again. So careful, so gentle. If he’s still shaking, just a little, she knows it’ll fade.

She does love them. She loves them because they’re part of him. Because he lived through them, and they didn’t kill him inside. He carries them around with him and maybe he hates them, maybe he’s even ashamed of them, but they didn’t ruin him.

He might not know it, might not believe it, but inside he glows. He’s brilliant. These harsh lines are like storms on the face of the sun. They darken and they arc but all they do is make everything around them brighter.

He might not believe it yet.

But he will.


End file.
